A disaster foretold:
The assassination of Yasser Arafat

by Uri Avnery

It is now official: the government of Israel has decided to assassinate 
Yasser Arafat. Not any more to "exile". Not any more to "expel or kill". 
Simply to "remove". Of course, the intention is not to remove him to 
another country. Nobody seriously believes that Yasser Arafat will raise 
his hands and allow himself to be marched off. He and his men will be 
killed "during the exchange of fire". This would not be the first time.

Even if it was possible to expel Arafat to another country, nobody in the 
Israeli leadership would dream of doing so. How come? Allow him to make the 
rounds of Putin, Schroeder and Chirac? God forbid. So the plan is to remove 
him to the next world.

Not immediately. The Americans forbid it. It may make Bush angry. Sharon 
does not want to annoy Bush.

Some people comfort themselves with the thought that this is just an empty 
resolution. It is supposed to be implemented at a time and in a way yet to 
be decided. But this is wishful thinking, a dangerous comfort.

The decision legitimising his assassination is by itself a far-reaching 
political act. It is intended to get the Israeli and international public 
used to the idea. What used to sound like a crazy plot by extreme fanatics 
now has the air of a legitimate political process, with only the time and 
mode of implementation still open.

Anyone familiar with Ariel Sharon can see how things will develop from now 
on. He will wait for his opportunity. It may come any minute, or after a 
week, a month, a year. He is patient. When he decides to do something, he 
is ready to wait, but he won't deviate from his goal.

So when will the planned assassination be carried out? When some big 
suicide attack will take place in Israel, one so big that an extreme 
reaction will be understood by the Americans, too. Or when something 
happens somewhere to divert world attention from our country. Or when some 
dramatic event, something comparable to the destruction of the Twin Towers, 
makes Bush furious.

What will happen afterwards?

Arab leaders say that there will be "incalculable results". But, in truth, 
the results can be calculated fairly well in advance.

The murder of Arafat will bring about an historic change in the 
relationship between Israel and the Palestinian people. Since the 1973 war, 
both peoples have been accepting the idea of a compromise between the two 
great national movements.

In the Oslo agreement, after a process initiated by Yasser Arafat 
practically alone, the Palestinians gave up 78 percent of the country that 
was called Palestine before 1948. They agreed to set up their state in the 
remaining 22 percent. Only Arafat had the moral and political standing 
necessary to carry the people with him, much as Ben-Gurion was able to 
convince our people to accept the partition plan.

Even in the sharpest crises since then, both peoples have remained 
steadfast in their belief that in the end there will be a compromise.

The assassination of Arafat will put an end to this, perhaps forever. We 
shall return to the stage of "all or nothing": Greater Israel or Greater 
Palestine, throwing the Jews into the sea or pushing the Palestinians out 
into the desert.

The Palestinian Authority will disappear. Israel will take over all the 
Palestinian territories, with all the economic and human stress involved. 
The "deluxe occupation", which allowed Israel a free hand in the 
territories, with the world paying the bills, will be over.

Violence will reign supreme. It will be the sole language of both peoples. 
In Jerusalem and Ramallah, Haifa and Hebron, Tulkarm and Tel-Aviv, fear 
will stalk the streets. Every mother who sends her children to school will 
be consumed by worry until they come back. Terror on this side and on that 
side, an ever widening spiral of violence, automatic and incessant 
escalation.

The earthquake will not be limited to the land between the Mediterranean 
and the Jordan. The whole Arab world will erupt. Arafat the shahid, the 
martyr, the hero, the symbol, will become an all-Arab, all-Muslim 
mythological figure. His name will become a battle-cry for all 
revolutionaries from Indonesia to Morocco, a slogan for all religious and 
nationalist underground organisations.

The earth will tremble under the feet of all the Arab regimes. Compared to 
Arafat, the ultimate hero, all the kings, Emirs and presidents will look 
unmanly, traitors and mercenaries. If one of them falls, the Domino Effect 
will go into action.

Bloodshed will be universal. Every Israeli target — every airplane, every 
group of tourists, every Israeli institution, will be in constant danger.

The Americans have their reasons for vetoing the assassination. They know 
that the killing of Arafat will shake their position in the Arab and Muslim 
world to the core. The guerilla war that is becoming ever wider in Iraq 
will spread throughout the Arab and other Muslim countries and the world at 
large.

American consent

Every Arab and Muslim will believe that Sharon acted with American consent 
and encouragement, whatever feeble verbal opposition there may have been. 
The fury will be directed against them. A host of new bin Ladens will plot 
revenge.

Doesn't Sharon understand all this? Of course he does. The political 
nobodies who constitute the government may be unable to see beyond the end 
of their noses, just like blinkered generals, whose only solution is to 
kill and destroy. But Sharon knows what the consequences are likely to be -
- and he relishes them.

Sharon wants to conclude the historic clash between Zionism and the 
Palestinian people with a clear-cut decision: solid Israeli control over 
the entire country and a situation that will compel the Palestinians to get 
out. Yasser Arafat is indeed the "total obstacle", as defined in the 
government resolution, to the implementation of this design. And a period 
of anarchy and bloodshed would be good for its implementation.

And the people of Israel? The poor, brainwashed, despairing and apathetic 
people do not intervene. The silent, bleeding majority behaves as if all 
this does not concern them and their children. They are following Sharon as 
the children followed the pied piper, right into the river.

This thundering silence is disastrous. In order to prevent the disaster, it 
is our duty to break it.

* * *

http://www.avnery-news.co.il/english/index.htmlUri Avnery is a leading peace 
activist in Israel.